An ISP should never even accept someone on the SBL, much less continue to keep them. Being on the SBL means you have provable been kicked off three other ISPs for AUP violations. (This strict defination keeps the SBL from being sued.) Those customers should never have been accepted in the first place.
And, yes, you get what you pay for, it's supply and demand. Rackspace is cheaper because less customers want to go with a supplier that's blacklisted everywhere.
Lately though we are worried about blacklisting of our rackspace IP's due to the crazy way some of these blacklists operate.
Oh, don't worry about that.There are plenty of crazy blacklists that only block parts of Rackspace, but the bugs are being worked out and soon Rackspace will be entirely blocked.
Filtering doesn't do a damn thing to stop spam, and in fact incurs more costs than just passing the spam on to the user.
And saying that ISPs should offer that level of customization is idiotic. Some do, some don't. If you want one that does, go to one that does.
Otherwise, it's basically the same as going into McDonalds and whining that you don't have three sizes of drinks and fries with each meal. If you want that, you can pack up and go to Burger King.
If you want to convince McDonalds that it would be better for them to do that, then strike up a conversation with them, with someone who can make those type of changes, to try to convince them they would get more business if they did so.
Whining that McDoland 'should' do something is just wasting everyone's time. They don't want to do it, it's not worth their expense. You don't have any right, legal or even moral, to require them to offer a specific level of customization.
Likewise, the customers who want that kind of email can go with the ISP who offers it. And I'll track down and beat to the death the first person who claims they can't switch ISPs...you damn well can get another mail account somewhere else, and claiming otherwise is insane.
The problem, really, is that some people hate blocklists, usually people who don't understand how serious the network abuse situtation has gotten, and want to continually spread crap about them, because they can't send email from their cable modem or pay cheaper rates because their ISP is a spammer and still have their email get through. (Hi, it's called supply and demand. The rates are cheaper because there's less demand, because people who do the slightest bit of research find they won't be able to email from those netblocks to half the net.)
However, the 'ISPs don't have the right to block my mail' theory has basically been discredited, so people have started approaching it from the other end, and pretending that people somehow have no choice in where they get their email. Which is completely absurd.
The problem is that postfix has about a dozen ways of doing 'virtual domains'.
None of my local users, as in, actual shell account holders. get mail. All the mail accounts are in a mysql database, as are all the domains that we accept mail for, and they all dump into/var/mail/domain.dom/n/name/. I don't think I use any of the 'virtual' stuff at all.
Of course, I don't do any of the + tricks with email addresses. or run any mailing lists.
Yes you can get code of illegal origin accepted into GPL software, but you can get it accepted into any software. With open source software, at least, there's the chance of someone else noticing it, whereas with closed source there's almost no chance of it. You aren't more likely to end up that way, you are less.
Anyway, it's not even clear that copying an entire function is a copyright violation. Most functions that could be copied wholesale into open source projects without people noticing are things like malloc or linked list implimentations, and there's some pretty good legal arguments that it's impossible to copyright any of those. Every version of them is almost completely identical once you strip out the formatting and variable names, and you can't copyright functionality or ideas.
Just like you can't copyright a recipe or driving directions, you probably can't copyright a malloc(). The 'work' is simply a statement of fact, that is how you write a malloc(), that's how everyone writes it.
Technically the formatting and variable names may make it copyrightable, just like you can't phtotocopy a recipe book and sell it because of the formatting and layout. But you can probably legally reformat and rename the variables, just like you can write down a recipe out of a book and sell copies of what you wrote down. (Also note that a lot of formatting is simply applying rules, and probably isn't subject to copyright either. It has to be a creative work, not machine generated by 'indent'. And 'creatively' formatting code is rather frowned on in programming.) (And most variable names are obvious, also.)
In short, claiming copyright over small bits of standard code like malloc() is absurd, and doesn't match up to how copyright law works, even ignoring fair use rules, it's possibly they don't have any copyright protection at all. Once you throw in fair use, any claims gets even more shady.
And before everyone gets all excited, I'll point out that if there's ever a legal ruling to that effect, it will be open source that everyone starts ripping off.
Actual, the 'only one backup copy' is a misinterpetion of the law, although it's one that various people in the copyright office have claimed at times.
The law doesn't say that you have the right to make one backup copy, it says 'a copy' is valid if it is for backup only. Here, read it, bold mine:
117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
In short, if you own a copy of a computer program, you can make another copy for archival purposes. Then you can make another copy for archival purposes. Then you can make another copy for archival purposes...
And when you cease owning the program legally, you have to destroy them all.
There's absolutely nothing in there that allows you to only do it once.
If you're still doubting, check out (1), which also says a copy...yet no one claims you can only install a program to a computer...and that's your 'one copy' to use it, you don't get to copy it into memory, because you already copied it to the hard drive. That's absurd.
Nope, you get to copy a computer program as many times as required for it to run on your computer, and you get to copy a computer program as many times as you want to archive it. As long as you destroy all copies when you cease owning it, of course.
Don't do that. Every penny that goes to SCO goes towards helping keep the company afloat. Every penny that goes towards their stock gives the company legitimacy.
SCO should die. They should go down with all engines on fire and a wing missing, and slam straight into the ground.
No last minute attempts to fix them, or buy them out, or gain control of them.
Their assets will be sold at auction after they fold, anyway. That's all anyone could possibly want from them.
I seriously doubt a DOS program is internet and dumb terminal capable, and suspect it's some brand of Unix. That's not to say such a solution is impossible, I just doubt it.
That said, the eerie blue is called 'Cherenkov radiation', and is due to light trying to go through water at faster than the speed of light through water.
If I had lost twice more that would have been a losing night, and as I said, this method won't guarantee a win every time you sit down. What it does is improve the likelihood that, given the normal win % of a skilled bj player over a long series of hands, a positive net outcome is acheived.
No, it does not. It ensures you will, on average, lose at least a penny on each dollar, as that's the odds on 'perfect' blackjack.
You said I'm "like all the other supersitious (sic) gamblers...gambling with a pattern of money does not have anything to do with how likely you are to come out ahead, at all." which is totally illogical in many ways. For example if I bet my entire bank roll on one hand I have a very low probabiltiy of leaving a winner - the probabiltiy of winning one hand. Which is less than 40%. If I manage my bets and play a multitude of hands, then my % moves closer to the "standard decision table" win % which is ~40%. Clearly this demonstrates a difference based on how I bet my money. Calling me superstituous does not refute any point of this system.
Um, no. If you'd bet the money on one hand, you'd have exactly the same odds as leaving a winner as you did by extending your bets.
That is, in fact, the defination of the phrase 'average probability'. You can't increase or decrease the probablity by playing more games, that's completely nonsensical.
how can you know enough about me to say I "dont realize.. card counting is done by altering your bet..." certainly not because you are psychic because if you were then you would know that I was taught to do it at a very young age... maybe you assumed I didn't RTFA or any of the posts made b4 mine... oops bad assumption, dude!
You acted like altering your bet was some incredible stragety you thought of, and it was much better than card counting...when of course, in card counting, what you do is alter your bet. Excsuse me for assuming you didn't know what you were talking about.
However, the difference is, in card counting, you alter it in a logical way, one based on the odds of the dealer busting. Instead of the nonsensical 'how well did I do on the last bet', which has no bearing at all on how well you'll do the next time.
You try to discount this system by saying it relies on luck WHAT A JOKER are you trying to imply that card counting does NOT? When counting you notice, through keeping track of the cards played, that there is a slight increase in your probability of winning the hand. So you increase your bet for that one hand. I don't think you can demonstrate that any card counting stratgy will at any time give you a better than 50% probability to win based on information you have before any cards are dealt. (And how is THAT not depending on luck - you are self-contradicting)
Ah contraire, that's exactly what was mathematically proved way back in the 60s, with Edward Thorp famous book 'Beat the Dealer', that you can raise the odds to better than 50%. It's not only been proven through math, and computer simulations, but a bunch of MIT students ran off with more than a million dollars from local casinos that way, and wrote it up in a research paper.
What you failed to understand is that the strategy I outlined does not rely on anything except the standard decison table percentages and a distribution of wins and losses over a large number of hands.
And what you don't understand is that you will, no matter how well you play, win about 48% of the time, and 48% of the time winning is called losing.
if you play 500 hands you can expect to win 200 or so, in some random distribution of W and L, if you are a skilled player. That distribution will include strings of W and strings of L. The point of the system I described is that you will win more money in a string of Ws than you lose in an equal size string of Ls.
And you're more like to get a string of Ls than a string on Ws. Duh.
You cannot make money when you win less than 50% of the time, except by luck. And I quote you 'I was down $180 off my $200 bank.'. So, if you'd lost twice more, you would have been out 200 dollars.
You're basically exactly like all the other supersitious gamblers...gambling with a pattern of money does not have anything to do with how likely you are to come out ahead, at all.
Whereas, as you don't apparently realize, card counting is done by altering the amount of the bet...but it's based on the actual probability of the dealer to go bust by grabbing a high card when they take their required hit.
And that gives you better than 50% odds of winning (although not much higher), and you can make money on it. Provable, it's not just a superstition, you will end up making something like 2 cents every dollar you bet, assuming you start with enough.
Whereas any pattern of betting is totally unrelated to how much you walk out with on average. Sure, you might 'win back' all your money with higher and higher bets...but you're also pretty damn likely to go broke. (And 'winning back' money is a fairly lame stragety in the first place.)
I don't know why people are talking about dealers counting...who cares? Dealers can't alter their play based on the count, they can't alter their play at all.
nobody like to play at tables with a continuous automatic shuffling machine, for example. they put people off because people like to think they can see patterns, even if they are not counting. Of course, they wouldn't win anyway unless they counted, but they might be put off playing which is why the casinos would prefer something better than changing shuffling rules.
Which is why 'card counting' actually means 'winning too much'. Everyone counts cards, period. Some people have some sort of system using math, some people just delibrately pay attention what's going on, and the rest just kinda notice...hey, we just had a lot of face cards, probably running low on those.
However, in blackjack, playing a 'perfect' game without any knowledge of the cards is already is going to pay out 48%. You can easily raise this to 50.1% even without a 'counting system' just by being observent.
Hence the whole reason casinos need an exucse to throw out players who know how to play a 'perfect' game, and modify based on cards they've seen. It's not cheating at all, or anything underhanded...it's just that blackjack is the only game you can, indeed, win at in Vegas. If they didn't reserve the right to throw you out when you started to do so, they'd end up going broke. (Or just not offering blackjack anymore.)
In craps, as many people do not know, you can bet against someone winning.
Ergo, if these 'crap-less crap' games make it less likely for the roller to win, that just means it's better to bet against the roller.
The only way for a craps game to pay off better to the house is to diddle around with the payouts. Anything that makes it more likely someone will lose means people will just bet against it.
It's basically like roulette. A casino couldn't get better odds by saying that 5 and 9 were no longer 'odd' numbers, but instead counted as even. Yeah, that makes odd numbers have a horrible payout, but even number payouts are now great!
How often someone often 'wins' or 'loses' while rolling is completely unrelated to how much the house takes in.
In fact, this exact thing happened to Unix before, when AT&T sued BSD, and AT&T ended up having to pay damages, because their Unix had a lot more BSD code than BSD have AT&T code.
I think the legal system would look poorly on the new owners of System V pulling this sort of nonsense again, suing someone for code they themselves mis-appropriated.
The problem is it's the 'honest mistakes' that are causing the spam problem. Someone hires someone, the spam, boo-hoo, it was a horrible accident, it will never happen again.
Well, tough shit. I don't care how honest an accident it was. 10,000 accidents is more than enough for people to get a clue, and realize it's a minefield and you can't casually stroll up to any company out there. I'm sick and tired of accidents, and it's about time their own fucking legs got blow off for their criminally irresponsible behavior.
However, I will forgive them if they're sue the ass off the people they hired. They have an airtight case that their subcontractors violated the law and caused irreparable harm to their name. Sue them. For a lot. Drive the spamhaus out of business.
Or they're a rather large part of the problem. In fact, they're pretty much the entire problem.
You honesly think arresting people is somehow less dangerous to freedom of speech than simply blacklisting ISPs into backruptcy who host them?
I mean, I have nothing against arresting spammer, or even executing them, but getting the government involved is the most dangerous WRT freedom of speech, not the 'best option that doesn't limit it'.
How about because there are no fucking opt-in lists of that sort, period.
No one 'opts-in' to receive random crap emailed to them. There's no such list.
And anyone who's the slightest bit knowledgeable about the internet knows this. And they also know spammers lie.
Of course, that just proves they're liars about understanding the issue, not hypocrites. However, I expect them to sue this company into the ground. If they do not, I will instead operate on the assumption they knew full well what they were doing, or alternately don't care about their reputation.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the idea of calling something a 'restraining order' that really says 'you must accept things from me' to be a little surreal, myself.
And, yes, you get what you pay for, it's supply and demand. Rackspace is cheaper because less customers want to go with a supplier that's blacklisted everywhere.
Lately though we are worried about blacklisting of our rackspace IP's due to the crazy way some of these blacklists operate.
Oh, don't worry about that.There are plenty of crazy blacklists that only block parts of Rackspace, but the bugs are being worked out and soon Rackspace will be entirely blocked.
Which, frankly, seems a much better outcome to me.
And saying that ISPs should offer that level of customization is idiotic. Some do, some don't. If you want one that does, go to one that does.
Otherwise, it's basically the same as going into McDonalds and whining that you don't have three sizes of drinks and fries with each meal. If you want that, you can pack up and go to Burger King. If you want to convince McDonalds that it would be better for them to do that, then strike up a conversation with them, with someone who can make those type of changes, to try to convince them they would get more business if they did so.
Whining that McDoland 'should' do something is just wasting everyone's time. They don't want to do it, it's not worth their expense. You don't have any right, legal or even moral, to require them to offer a specific level of customization.
Likewise, the customers who want that kind of email can go with the ISP who offers it. And I'll track down and beat to the death the first person who claims they can't switch ISPs...you damn well can get another mail account somewhere else, and claiming otherwise is insane.
The problem, really, is that some people hate blocklists, usually people who don't understand how serious the network abuse situtation has gotten, and want to continually spread crap about them, because they can't send email from their cable modem or pay cheaper rates because their ISP is a spammer and still have their email get through. (Hi, it's called supply and demand. The rates are cheaper because there's less demand, because people who do the slightest bit of research find they won't be able to email from those netblocks to half the net.)
However, the 'ISPs don't have the right to block my mail' theory has basically been discredited, so people have started approaching it from the other end, and pretending that people somehow have no choice in where they get their email. Which is completely absurd.
Or you can just use the snapshot...it's not like it's unstable, plenty of places use it on huge production servers.
And I thnk there's a patch with just CIDR, but I am not sure.
None of my local users, as in, actual shell account holders. get mail. All the mail accounts are in a mysql database, as are all the domains that we accept mail for, and they all dump into /var/mail/domain.dom/n/name/. I don't think I use any of the 'virtual' stuff at all.
Of course, I don't do any of the + tricks with email addresses. or run any mailing lists.
Yes you can get code of illegal origin accepted into GPL software, but you can get it accepted into any software. With open source software, at least, there's the chance of someone else noticing it, whereas with closed source there's almost no chance of it. You aren't more likely to end up that way, you are less.
Anyway, it's not even clear that copying an entire function is a copyright violation. Most functions that could be copied wholesale into open source projects without people noticing are things like malloc or linked list implimentations, and there's some pretty good legal arguments that it's impossible to copyright any of those. Every version of them is almost completely identical once you strip out the formatting and variable names, and you can't copyright functionality or ideas.
Just like you can't copyright a recipe or driving directions, you probably can't copyright a malloc(). The 'work' is simply a statement of fact, that is how you write a malloc(), that's how everyone writes it.
Technically the formatting and variable names may make it copyrightable, just like you can't phtotocopy a recipe book and sell it because of the formatting and layout. But you can probably legally reformat and rename the variables, just like you can write down a recipe out of a book and sell copies of what you wrote down. (Also note that a lot of formatting is simply applying rules, and probably isn't subject to copyright either. It has to be a creative work, not machine generated by 'indent'. And 'creatively' formatting code is rather frowned on in programming.) (And most variable names are obvious, also.)
In short, claiming copyright over small bits of standard code like malloc() is absurd, and doesn't match up to how copyright law works, even ignoring fair use rules, it's possibly they don't have any copyright protection at all. Once you throw in fair use, any claims gets even more shady.
And before everyone gets all excited, I'll point out that if there's ever a legal ruling to that effect, it will be open source that everyone starts ripping off.
When, of course, most spam has forged senders.
Whee, looks like another idiotic pattern I have to bock.
The law doesn't say that you have the right to make one backup copy, it says 'a copy' is valid if it is for backup only. Here, read it, bold mine:
117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
In short, if you own a copy of a computer program, you can make another copy for archival purposes. Then you can make another copy for archival purposes. Then you can make another copy for archival purposes...
And when you cease owning the program legally, you have to destroy them all.
There's absolutely nothing in there that allows you to only do it once.
If you're still doubting, check out (1), which also says a copy...yet no one claims you can only install a program to a computer...and that's your 'one copy' to use it, you don't get to copy it into memory, because you already copied it to the hard drive. That's absurd.
Nope, you get to copy a computer program as many times as required for it to run on your computer, and you get to copy a computer program as many times as you want to archive it. As long as you destroy all copies when you cease owning it, of course.
SCO should die. They should go down with all engines on fire and a wing missing, and slam straight into the ground.
No last minute attempts to fix them, or buy them out, or gain control of them.
Their assets will be sold at auction after they fold, anyway. That's all anyone could possibly want from them.
Except with Macs, it's true. You can be an idiot and run a Mac just fine.
That said, the eerie blue is called 'Cherenkov radiation', and is due to light trying to go through water at faster than the speed of light through water.
No, it does not. It ensures you will, on average, lose at least a penny on each dollar, as that's the odds on 'perfect' blackjack.
You said I'm "like all the other supersitious (sic) gamblers...gambling with a pattern of money does not have anything to do with how likely you are to come out ahead, at all." which is totally illogical in many ways. For example if I bet my entire bank roll on one hand I have a very low probabiltiy of leaving a winner - the probabiltiy of winning one hand. Which is less than 40%. If I manage my bets and play a multitude of hands, then my % moves closer to the "standard decision table" win % which is ~40%. Clearly this demonstrates a difference based on how I bet my money. Calling me superstituous does not refute any point of this system.
Um, no. If you'd bet the money on one hand, you'd have exactly the same odds as leaving a winner as you did by extending your bets.
That is, in fact, the defination of the phrase 'average probability'. You can't increase or decrease the probablity by playing more games, that's completely nonsensical.
how can you know enough about me to say I "dont realize.. card counting is done by altering your bet..." certainly not because you are psychic because if you were then you would know that I was taught to do it at a very young age... maybe you assumed I didn't RTFA or any of the posts made b4 mine... oops bad assumption, dude!
You acted like altering your bet was some incredible stragety you thought of, and it was much better than card counting...when of course, in card counting, what you do is alter your bet. Excsuse me for assuming you didn't know what you were talking about.
However, the difference is, in card counting, you alter it in a logical way, one based on the odds of the dealer busting. Instead of the nonsensical 'how well did I do on the last bet', which has no bearing at all on how well you'll do the next time.
You try to discount this system by saying it relies on luck WHAT A JOKER are you trying to imply that card counting does NOT? When counting you notice, through keeping track of the cards played, that there is a slight increase in your probability of winning the hand. So you increase your bet for that one hand. I don't think you can demonstrate that any card counting stratgy will at any time give you a better than 50% probability to win based on information you have before any cards are dealt. (And how is THAT not depending on luck - you are self-contradicting)
Ah contraire, that's exactly what was mathematically proved way back in the 60s, with Edward Thorp famous book 'Beat the Dealer', that you can raise the odds to better than 50%. It's not only been proven through math, and computer simulations, but a bunch of MIT students ran off with more than a million dollars from local casinos that way, and wrote it up in a research paper.
What you failed to understand is that the strategy I outlined does not rely on anything except the standard decison table percentages and a distribution of wins and losses over a large number of hands.
And what you don't understand is that you will, no matter how well you play, win about 48% of the time, and 48% of the time winning is called losing.
if you play 500 hands you can expect to win 200 or so, in some random distribution of W and L, if you are a skilled player. That distribution will include strings of W and strings of L. The point of the system I described is that you will win more money in a string of Ws than you lose in an equal size string of Ls.
And you're more like to get a string of Ls than a string on Ws. Duh.
You can'
And, no, writing them in a wacky font is not a useful way to protect trade secrets.
You cannot make money when you win less than 50% of the time, except by luck. And I quote you 'I was down $180 off my $200 bank.'. So, if you'd lost twice more, you would have been out 200 dollars.
You're basically exactly like all the other supersitious gamblers...gambling with a pattern of money does not have anything to do with how likely you are to come out ahead, at all.
Whereas, as you don't apparently realize, card counting is done by altering the amount of the bet...but it's based on the actual probability of the dealer to go bust by grabbing a high card when they take their required hit.
And that gives you better than 50% odds of winning (although not much higher), and you can make money on it. Provable, it's not just a superstition, you will end up making something like 2 cents every dollar you bet, assuming you start with enough.
Whereas any pattern of betting is totally unrelated to how much you walk out with on average. Sure, you might 'win back' all your money with higher and higher bets...but you're also pretty damn likely to go broke. (And 'winning back' money is a fairly lame stragety in the first place.)
I don't know why people are talking about dealers counting...who cares? Dealers can't alter their play based on the count, they can't alter their play at all.
Which is why 'card counting' actually means 'winning too much'. Everyone counts cards, period. Some people have some sort of system using math, some people just delibrately pay attention what's going on, and the rest just kinda notice...hey, we just had a lot of face cards, probably running low on those.
However, in blackjack, playing a 'perfect' game without any knowledge of the cards is already is going to pay out 48%. You can easily raise this to 50.1% even without a 'counting system' just by being observent.
Hence the whole reason casinos need an exucse to throw out players who know how to play a 'perfect' game, and modify based on cards they've seen. It's not cheating at all, or anything underhanded...it's just that blackjack is the only game you can, indeed, win at in Vegas. If they didn't reserve the right to throw you out when you started to do so, they'd end up going broke. (Or just not offering blackjack anymore.)
In craps, as many people do not know, you can bet against someone winning.
Ergo, if these 'crap-less crap' games make it less likely for the roller to win, that just means it's better to bet against the roller.
The only way for a craps game to pay off better to the house is to diddle around with the payouts. Anything that makes it more likely someone will lose means people will just bet against it.
It's basically like roulette. A casino couldn't get better odds by saying that 5 and 9 were no longer 'odd' numbers, but instead counted as even. Yeah, that makes odd numbers have a horrible payout, but even number payouts are now great!
How often someone often 'wins' or 'loses' while rolling is completely unrelated to how much the house takes in.
I think the legal system would look poorly on the new owners of System V pulling this sort of nonsense again, suing someone for code they themselves mis-appropriated.
With the lottery, you have very good odds of losing a dollar, and very slight odds of winning a lot.
With doubling your money this way, you have very good odds of winning a dollar, and very slight odds of losing all your money.
Obviously, the odds in the lottery are skewed towards 'losing a little', and the odds in doubling your money are skewed towards 'losing a lot'.
Well, tough shit. I don't care how honest an accident it was. 10,000 accidents is more than enough for people to get a clue, and realize it's a minefield and you can't casually stroll up to any company out there. I'm sick and tired of accidents, and it's about time their own fucking legs got blow off for their criminally irresponsible behavior.
However, I will forgive them if they're sue the ass off the people they hired. They have an airtight case that their subcontractors violated the law and caused irreparable harm to their name. Sue them. For a lot. Drive the spamhaus out of business.
Or they're a rather large part of the problem. In fact, they're pretty much the entire problem.
I mean, I have nothing against arresting spammer, or even executing them, but getting the government involved is the most dangerous WRT freedom of speech, not the 'best option that doesn't limit it'.
No one 'opts-in' to receive random crap emailed to them. There's no such list.
And anyone who's the slightest bit knowledgeable about the internet knows this. And they also know spammers lie.
Of course, that just proves they're liars about understanding the issue, not hypocrites. However, I expect them to sue this company into the ground. If they do not, I will instead operate on the assumption they knew full well what they were doing, or alternately don't care about their reputation.
Wait a minute, both those already are illegal, at the national level. And spammers mysteriously keep doing them...
Who's this 'we'? Microsoft should be doing that, not us.